Cocktails, spirits, bars, and bartenders: Alcademics is the study of booze with beverage journalist Camper English.

pisco

Thursday, May 14th is Bar School Day as part of San Francisco Cocktail Week. All the classes are listed here- and some of them are selling out. Book a class today! After class, check out one of these events: The Peruvian Connection Pisco Latin Lounge, 5-11PM 1817 Market Street Free admission, $7.00 Pisco Punch and Pisco Sour all night Meet cocktail history researcher Guillermo Toro-Lira (author of the international award winning book “Wings of Cherubs. The Saga of the Rediscovery of Pisco Punch”) and a member of the Academia Peruana del Pisco, Peru’s elite Pisco Historical Society. Just back from...
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A few months ago several San Franciscan bartenders went on a trip to Peru and Brazil and brought back with them samples, Peruvian bitters, and ideas for new drinks. Borys Saciuk of Restaurant Michael Mina added a coca leaf-infused Pisco Punch to the menu, but has already replaced it with a lemon verbena Pisco Sour. He also added the Porto Alegre to the menu, a drink made with cachaca, marschino liqueur, Amaro Eole, pineapple gum syrup, lime juice, and egg white. Walter Moore will start working with Cabana Cachaca and is starting a South American wine and spirits import company....
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Every Thursday there is an incredibly awesome nerdy online event called Thursday Drink Night at the Mixoloseum chat room. It starts at 4PM West Coast time. Each week there is a theme. Sometimes it's a concept (rinses) sometimes a recipe variation (Long Island Iced Tea, Zombie), and sometimes it's a particular product. Last week was Tuaca night, and tonight is Beefeater gin. In the chat, someone proposes a drink recipe and a bunch of people make the drink to see if they like it. There is much interactive tweaking of the recipes and fun commentary all around. Then we move...
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With Pisco Sours all the rage these days, people have been seeking out real Peruvian bitters to dash atop the foam of their drinks instead of Angostura. I found them available for sale in the US at PeruCooking.com. The Amargo Chuncho bitters have the cinnamon/allspice flavors of Angostura, but with some bright cherry notes to them as well. I also got some instant Pisco Sour and Pisco Punch mix from the site. Both mixes are made with freeze-dried ingredients: sugar, lemon juice, and egg whites in the sour mix, and pineapple, orange, and lemon juices in the punch mix. (The...
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As a bonus supplement to my story in the SF Chronicle on E Clampus Vitus, here are pictures I took of the historic plaques located around SF. I didn't get a picture of the Anchor Brewing or Molloy's Tavern in Colma, but here are the other four. Bonus: Bummer and Lazarus plaque.
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Though we like to think the interest in classic cocktails is a recent one, the members of E Clampus Vitus have been celebrating drink history since the year 5937. That date - 1932 in our years - corresponds with the rebirth of an organization commonly called ECV, or the Clampers, whose motto, Credo Quia Absurdum, translates (though not exactly) into "I believe because it is absurd." Here is the rest of this story I wrote in today's San Francisco Chronicle about E Camplus Vitus, a drinking historical society or a historical drinking society- they can't decide which.
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I was stumbling through the internet the other day and came acrross this vintage story on Pisco Punch, written by Lucius Beebe and published in Gourmet Magazine in 1957. Some choice quotes: Once in the hands of Duncan Nicol it was translated, as by consecration in the name of a divinity more benevolent than all others, into Pisco punch, the wonder and glory of San Francisco's heady youth, the balm and solace of fevered generations, a drink so endearing and inspired that although its prototype has vanished, its legend lingers on, one with the Grail, the unicorn, and the music...
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Check out this recipe for a relatively easy (no gum Arabic required!) bowl of Pisco Punch by the Pegu Club's Audrey Saunders. The recipe if for a bowl of punch but with the way it's put together you could make individual portions. It''s part of a series of holiday punches from New York Magazine. Mmm, Holiday pisco.
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